Sunday, February 24, 2008

YouTube Banned by Pakistan

Pakistan joined the club of countries that have banned YouTube.

The countries, and why they pulled the plug on YouTube:
  • Pakistan: a movie trailer for Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders's upcoming film, saying that Islam is fascist and likely to incite violence against women and homosexuals
  • Turkey: some video clips insulted, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, in someone's opinion.
  • Thailand: video clips were offensive to Thailand's revered monarch, King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
  • Morocco: someone posted videos that weren't complimentary about how Morocco treated the people of Western Sahara (Morocco's controlled that territory since 1975).
I think I can understand the leadership in these countries, even if I can't approve of their actions. It must be very tempting to silence people who don't agree with you, or who reveal inadequacies in your actions.

At the risk of applying moral equivalence, perhaps Americans shouldn't be very critical of the leaders who banned YouTube. After all, the United States enforces Hate Crime laws.
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Blogroll

Note! Although I believe that these websites and blogs are useful resources for understanding the War on Terror, I do not necessarily agree with their opinions. 1 1 Given a recent misunderstanding of the phrase "useful resources," a clarification: I do not limit my reading to resources which support my views, or even to those which appear to be accurate. Reading opinions contrary to what I believed has been very useful at times: sometimes verifying my previous assumptions, sometimes encouraging me to change them.

Even resources which, in my opinion, are simply inaccurate are sometimes useful: these can give valuable insights into why some people or groups believe what they do.

In short, It is my opinion that some of the resources in this blogroll are neither accurate, nor unbiased. I do, however, believe that they are useful in understanding the War on Terror, the many versions of Islam, terrorism, and related topics.